Official Luthiers Forum!

Check out this new CC service from Intuit called GoPayment.

Or the similar (and been around longer) Square Inc. service.

How do these stack up?

Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Thats a pretty good rate. Especially if you are not doing big volume.


Posted from my Toaster oven using Tapatalk

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

I am still with paypal. I am in a small town , we have 3 banks and all of them use a similar rate structure. With paypal I am under 2% when I figure in the rebates . It is convenient and I can process a payment anywhere I have an internet connection. Paypal is easier to work with when you do more than $10,000 a month.
Tony works at a bank so he has a better idea of what a good deal is. With Paypal debit card I get a rebate every time I use that , with that and the lower charge for staying over the low limit it works for me. Also Paypal must report to the feds anyone that does more than $10,000 gross a year.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

A good deal is a deal that you think is fair. If you are only paying about 2%, thats a pretty good deal. I did not know PayPal reports to the Feds if your gross sales through them are over $10,000. That is interesting. I wonder why since you are not dealing with cash.
Credit cards are a crazy business. A business can be charge different rates depending on if the card being used is a regular credit card, or some type of rewards card. Rewards cards are a higher rate because somebody has to pay for those rewards and it certainly isn't going to be Alec Baldwin, Capital One, or the customer who has the rewards card. It is the vendor selling the goods.
not to get off topic, but an interesting thing to note about credit cards is that most merchant agreements state that a merchant can not demand you show ID when using a credit card and they can not refuse your card if you refuse to show ID. Try explaining that to the cashier at WalMart and see where you get.

I have never had trouble with Paypal but I am pretty much only using it to pay for stuff. I rarely receive money through them.

The company my bank uses for CC processing is called Logical Processing. You can google them for a number if interested. They are located in Holland, Pa.

Happy now Mike O'Melia? I didn't even give a contact name so you know I am not getting a commission from them for each customer I send.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Hi all,

Well, out of my other thread that I started regarding Paypal, as well as this one, my conclusion to all this is that it seems the wise thing to do to keep as little money as possible in our Paypal account. I think we are better off paying through Paypal using our credit card than money stored in our Paypal account. This way you get all the advantages of Paypal, without risking to get your assets froze up for whatever reason Paypal feel is valid.

At least that's what I'm going to do until someone/something makes me change my mind.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

If you link it to your bank account and make a purchase with no funds in your Paypal account, it will give you an option to do an "instant" transfer from your bank to cover the purchase at no charge. This is handy if you don't want to purchase things on credit for whatever reason.

Funny how when you're transferring money out it takes 3 days.

I've always hated paypal and try and not use them whenever possible. I'd rather wait for the check to arrive in the mail.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Thanks for letting me know. But I'm not sure I like that. That means if some computer hacker gets my Paypal username and password, they get access to my bank account! I'll investigate...


I've always wondered that as well. If you are at the other end of the world, you can get cash out of any ATM machine in seconds. Yet, when trying to cash a check from a different bank than yours, it will take 5 business days to clear out, even if the other bank is just accross the street!

I'm sure the banks just use our funds to speculate on the stock market while we wait for the money to clear...

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Why is everyone looking at me?

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Ok, I just checked my Paypal account. Being new to Paypal, I'm still learning, and it seems I can take money out of my bank account just as easy as I can send money to it. So as I was afraid of, somebody getting their hands on my Paypal username and password can send themself money directly from my bank account! Is there something to pretect user from such things happening? I'll have to check with my bank if I can block transfers to Paypal.

I've had the bad experience of having my computer hacked, and they did get their hands on my bank account username and password. Thanks to extra security from my bank web site (they ask an additional personal question when they notice you are logging in from a different computer than usual), nothing bad happened. But after investigating how I got hacked, I realised it's almost impossible to be fully safe. The best way I have found is to use a computer exclusively for accessing my bank. Otherwise their is too much risk of some trojan spying on you and logging in every key you type on your keyboard, thus stealing your username and passwords.

Just for those who might be interested in the conclusions of my investigation on how I got hacked, here it is. (By the way, I use to be a software engineer, so I know my way around a computer, and I certainly know how to recognize some bogus email trying to fish me out. I did not get hacked this easy way.) Essentially, the security of usual web site hosts is far from being as tough as bank sites and other similar site, such as Paypal. So hackers can easily get in and screw up with any web site that is hosted on whatever server they just hacked. That is how they introduce some virus to any otherwise inofensive looking web page. That small virus, once on your computer, can then screw up your registry database and change the default web site Firefox, Acrobat, or any other usual application check for upgrades. This way when these applications (which all have exceptions defined on our firewall) download a new upgrade, it's actually a trojan. So you end up with a hacked computer simply because you surfed the web.

Just so you know...

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

I have in the past ten years had my account frozen a few times. Paypal knows my irl or url or what ever the rl is. They know when my account is being accessed by a computer outside the norm. Then the security questions are asked and if the used on that end can't answer them the account gets locked.
This freezes my assets until I access my account and they ask the security questions , and since I am the one the put in the answers I can then unlock my account. It is better than getting the account drained. I have also found on 2 occasions someone used my account info to access "adult" sites. When I saw that on my account page there is a section to refute the charge. So far I am batting 1000.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Thanks for the info John. That is really good to know.

I guess having my Paypal account for such a long time, I didn't remember there was security questions. As a matter of fact, I'll have to update them as I don't remember what they are!

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Security questions are good, and I use them for banking and paypal and such; it's an extra layer pf protection after the password. And just to be extra safe, I don't even use the "right" answer to the security questions, because if someone really wants to know my Mother's maiden name, I'm sure they can find it, for example, so I screw them up one step further by making-up the answer with something only I would understand.

And...

When I first started doing on-line banking, I took it yet another step further and boot my computer with a CD drive operating system(I think it's "Puppylinux") that runs the entire computer from the CD/DVD tray, not the hard drive, such that even the best trojan couldn't record my keystrokes and passwords, since every 'boot-up' is essentially a fresh, new install of the operating system, and nothing from the previous session was ever recorded. A bit of a hassle, but if you want to be as safe as possible, there it is! No trace of your banking will ever be on your computer, or any other device for that matter.

Oh, and no problems with Paypal here, so far. But I also don't get needlessly overly-specific when stating goods. They're mostly "guitar repair parts". I'm sure that if I typed "tortoise shell pickguard" I'd be automatically red-flagged by the Paypal robots, then I'd have to explain to them how the bear sh!ts in the woods, and that the 'tortoise shell pickguard' is in fact a synthetic. But "guitar repair parts" is a completely legal, and simple, description and doesn't require a song and dance routine. I'm sure "guitar parts" or "wood" would suffice in place of "Cuban Mahogany", also.

Don't link your main (or only) bank account to Paypal. I've got an account at a small local bank I use for Paypal. I keep less than $50 in this account. I put money into the account from another account only if I want to buy something. When I recieve payments via Paypal I get the money into another acocunt as soon as possible. I don't have any credit cards. The only debit card I use online is from the account I use for Paypal.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

See? They can be a PITA at times, but reasonable when u work with them

John, Oh yeah, about those adult sites, my bad. Next time I will choose the acount of someone I don't know so well, like this Tony Soprano guy in NY

Tony, getting your pizzo?

Mike

I don't know nuttin.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

I keep $0.00 in my Paypal, I linked it to an account that has a $500.00 limit for minor transactions. If I have a purchase over $500.00 I can transfer. The account I transfer from has triple security personal rotating questions so they are never the same. The same layer of protection is on the paypal linked account. So far no hitches, but I do hate waiting for my money to credit and be able to with draw it from paypal.

Joe H.

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Joe

My wife asks me "How many Guitars do you need?"
I reply "When I die count them; thats how many I needed".

Same reason(s) I stopped using PayPal. Just think of all the money they hold for that 3-4 day float between "charging" you and "remitting" your sales? Got to add up to a pretyy penny!

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Hank Mauel

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain this to people. Per their agreement you are only required to reproduce the signature.

An easy way to increase security a little is to sign up for automatic e-mails from you bank of transfers or withdrawals over a certain amount. It's a notification option with Chase, so I'd guess most other banks offer it as well.

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Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."